Currently, the biofuels industry lacks sufficient renewable feedstocks that are easily fermented to biofuels or new varieties of organisms selected to use diverse feedstock. Current renewable biomass choices include forest waste, switch grass, sorghum, barley, sugar cane and corn. Sources of additional low cost feedstocks are required for the growth of the biofuels industry and to meet governmental goals to replace fossil fuel energy with renewal energy sources.
The current biofuels industry tends to categorize higher plants as feedstock for starch or cellulose, algae as a source of lipids for biodiesel or food oils, and bacteria as fermenting organisms to produce bioalcohols. However, basic science teaches us that algae and bacteria, in addition to higher plants, can be feedstock, degrade feedstock and produce biofuels. Eukaryotic cells are characterized by possessing membrane bound organelles. It is a well-accepted theory (the endosymbiont theory) that these organelles were derived by ancient symbiosis between bacteria, archaea or other eukaryotes. A branch of eukaryotes called the archaeplastida, from which higher plants, algae and glaucophyta are derived, are differentiated from other organisms by the fact that they accumulate starch. Algae obtain energy by photosynthesis, basically producing food (energy) from light. Many algae store energy in the form of starch. For example, red algae store energy in the form of floridean starch, and brown algae store energy as laminarin. Chlamydomonas, a eukaryotic, single cell, algae, can grow on inorganic salts in the light, using photosynthesis to provide energy, also stored as starch. They can also grow without light using acetate as a sole carbon source. Recent studies have proven that starch synthesis in Rhodophyceae, Glaucophyta, and Chloroplastida consists of a mosaic of genes that originated from cyanobacterial and eukaryotic glycogen metabolisms, suggesting that endosymbiosis involved partners able to synthesize similar types of storage polysaccharides.
Research at leading universities suggests that algae could supply enough fuel to meet all of America's transportation needs in the form of biodiesel using a scant 0.2% of the nation's land. Enough algae can be grown to replace all transportation fuels in the U.S. on only 15,000 square miles, or 4.5 million acres of land.